-bound train at Braska in civilian dress Monday evening."

"Anything else?"

"No, sir."

"Captain Pollock, you may release Howard. He was in town with my
approbation and assent, looking for an absentee whose haunts he knew and
whose presence was required here. He says he boarded the train expecting
possibly to find him thereon, and wore civilian dress because his
uniform might have caused his rejection at places he wished to search."

Captain Pollock touched his cap without a word.

"You will also see that Paine and Brannan, recently confined, are sent
out to work with the police cart. Other orders as usual. You are
relieved, Captain Truman. That is all, Mr. Leonard."

The talk that ensued among the officers of the calvary command when this
matter was detailed at the club room will have to be condensed. Davies
was not present. He never went there. Cranston was present for the first
time in weeks, for it was an establishment for which ordinarily he had
no use. He and Truman went thither because they knew that that was where
Sanders could be found, and there they found him. It was barely ten
o'clock, but this light-hearted young gentleman, together with three or
four kindred spirits of the Fortieth, was discussing, to the
accompaniment of hot Scotch, the relative values of hands dealt at
random from a grimy deck. That they should have taken to hot Scotch at
such an hour they explained by the statement that as they had to be up
with the dawn the day was already old, and that they should be playing
poker they didn't consider a matter calling for explanation of any kind.
It was "a way they had in the army" in those days when the other
three-quarters of the year was spent in sharp campaigning. Sanders
cheerfully dropped his hand as he had his money and told his story like
a little man.

"We trotted or galloped all the way to town and found Paine soon after
six, drunk, of course,--too drunk to ride the spare horse, so while we
were waiting for an ambulance from the quartermaster's depot, I ran over
to the Cattle Club for a drink, and was chatting there with Willett and
Burtis,--by the way, I asked them both to drive out and dine with us
to-night and take in the hop later,--and presently in came a couple of
cattlemen from Cheyenne who knew everybody at Russell and were jolly,
pleasant fellows. They were going up on the evening freight, and we
loaded up a lunch-basket and went down to the depot to see them off in
the cab